


October in Arkansas, Cold Hands

by 1Boo



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Kissing, M/M, at least there's a bar, kissing and fluff i am disgusted with myself, that's sort of gritty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-14
Updated: 2014-04-14
Packaged: 2018-01-19 07:37:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1461130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1Boo/pseuds/1Boo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s a bar on the edge of a prairie somewhere in Arkansas and the sun is going down and Cas’s hands are cold.</p>
            </blockquote>





	October in Arkansas, Cold Hands

There’s a bar on the edge of a prairie somewhere in Arkansas and the sun is going down and Cas’s hands are cold. They’re standing out back, Cas and Dean, waiting for Sam to barter his way past the pissed off bartender to use the bathroom so they can get back on the road. Dean is not helping, because Sammy can wear his big-boy pants today, and because Cas wanted to watch the sun go down and the breath fog in front of his vessel’s mouth. There is a slab of cement out here, carpeted with ash and cigarettes, and a few picnic tables that might once have been red, but the wind off the prairie has scoured it away.

It is clean and cold and Dean leans against the wooden slats of the back of the bar, and his hand brushes Castiel’s. That’s how he knows Cas’s hands are cold. He didn’t ask or anything.

Dean looks down at Cas’s right hand, Jimmy’s knuckles but the knuckles Jimmy never used the way Castiel has. Jimmy is in bright oblivion; Castiel is here, watching birds rise up from the grass and the sun sink down. If Dean let him stay out here long enough he’d probably want to watch the dew freeze to frost, and creep across the dirt like it’s the most amazing thing in the world.

Dean can remember a time when Castiel couldn’t feel a knife through his heart. Now though, his hands are cold, so Dean pushes off of the wall, joints creaking, and takes hold of Castiel’s hand, Castiel’s borrowed bones, and without hesitation Castiel sighs and leans against Dean’s whole side like he’d been waiting, patiently, for Dean. Not for the frost or the sunset, but for Dean to come and warm the blood under his skin, where human and angel mix.

There will never be a time when this doesn’t stun Dean. He stares at Cas like he must be an impossible dream, but Castiel just snorts a little and makes himself comfortable on Dean’s shoulder.

It’s amazing how relaxed Cas is, even beneath all the layers of jackets and trenchcoats the two of them wear, a happy slump of angel with hair ruffled from the wind off the prairie. Dean kisses his hair because he can, and it smells like the leather inside the Impala and woodsmoke, because it’s October and they’re alive to see frost begin to stain the grass pale. Dean goes to kiss again but misses and gets the shell of Castiel’s ear and Castiel laughs, low in his throat, laughs at him and shifts to kiss him, once, on the lips, stubble catching. As if to say, Dean, this is how it’s done.

Dean ducks his head and grins a little into Cas’s shoulder, kisses him there just to annoy him a bit, just to love him a little more.

“Should we retrieve Sam?” Castiel asks. His fingers stroke Dean’s, press on the muscle of his thumb. There’s this incredible relief Dean can’t understand, doesn’t need to really, to being touched so easily. No one is dying, they’re just standing together because they can, because Castiel’s hands were cold and maybe Dean’s were too. They’re watching cigarette butts and a chip bag skitter around the legs of a picnic table, and they’re not so cold anymore.

The screen door slams at the front of the bar and answers that question for Cas, but they don’t move, not quite yet. Sam’s a smart kid. He’ll find them.

The sky is lilac now, the way it was when the earth was new and the moon hung closer and Castiel knows all these things but somehow he’s more entranced with Dean’s breath, pale in the air, and the way his hands, as battered as they’ve been, as much as they’ve clutched at cold and deadly metal, are warm now.


End file.
